Hi everyone,

Just wanted to report an odd issue I've been dealing with - maybe someone experienced will know more.

Occasionally my FD will trigger Engine Protection, and every instance has proven a mystery in terms of what triggered the event.

Oil Temp, Coolant Temp, Air Temp, Oil Pressure, Fuel Pressure and AFR are configured presently.

All of these parameters are within range in every instance!

What other "hidden" triggers are there? Does the ecu have any inherent protection triggers I'm not aware of?

Thanks.

 

Nothing hidden. And I doubt the protection is triggering for no reason. Getting a log of the sensors in question when engine protection is triggered would show you what's going on.

My first WAG would be AFR related. A lean spike is common enough. The next guess would be a loose ground or 5V connection to one or more sensors that causes an intermittent rouge signal.

 

Rather odd that this sleuthing is required. Why doesn't the software show what triggered the engine protection? Seems like a critical oversight by Haltech programmers.

 

Elite ECUs do store a DTC. The Sports do not. Running a log will capture the event.

 

we have discovered with our sport, that the ECU does have some protections that aren't obvious.

we had an intermittent cutting out problem, and it turned out to be that the ecu will shut the injectors down if you exceed 100% duty. it sounds reasonable, but it was a bit tricky to diagnose.

the second thing we've noticed is that the air temp map is turned off, but it runs differently if the sensor isn't plugged in. its a bit weird, as the map is set to zero, and its off, so the correction for 2.5v should be the same as 0v, but its not.

 

I've logged all pertinent channels related to engine protection and have not found anything out of range. Logging was set at 100ms for each channel.

 

i should expand my answer a little, we found out that our sport ECU, which doesn't even have engine protections, was going into a limp home/engine protection.

upon further investigation we found out that the ECU turns off the injectors if you hit 100%, and since we tuned with VE (for the first time), we had no idea what the injector duty even was, until we logged it. we knew duty was high, but we didn't know that these ECU's would do things that aren't specifically in the map.

which leads me to a question, how do you know its engine protection?

 

It's engine protection because I've logged that channel and all other channels which might have triggered it.

I did a few more runs tonight, this time taking high resolution logs of the trigger channels. I'm getting missed counts past 7400RPM... I'm guessing this phenomenon is causing EP but I'm not sure. I hit EP twice this time and just like before - all vitals were within range.

 

What trigger are you using? Post your map.

 

I'm using the FFE trigger kit with the stock FD VR.

My tuner will be checking the car out next month so I'll update everyone at that point.